Month: October 2008

Local

Polly Tribe for Davis School Board

Post author By David
Post date October 31, 2008
No Comments on Polly Tribe for Davis School Board

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I have not really paid much attention to the race for Davis County School board but I was reviewing my ballot to make sure I had looked into each race I will be voting on and realized that I had missed this one. I have not actively endorsed someone in each race I will vote in, but I was very impressed by two aspects of Polly Tribes campaign for the school board. After going to her site I soon clicked on the link to view her blog. I was immediately impressed with the way she had used her blog to answer questions that people had submitted to her. As I read through her answers I saw that I like the answers that she gave to those questions.

I am fully supporting Ms. Tribe for the school board (although I don’t expect this too have much impact this close to Tuesday) and hope that after she wins she will continue the tradition of open communications with two minor adjustments – I would hope that she would no longer use a campaign website after the voting is done, and I hope that she would open up comments ont he blog so that people can give feedback on her responses.

Tags 2008, Davis County, Education, elections, endorsements, School Board

National State

Proposition 8

I have stayed silent on proposition 8 thus far although I don’t imagine that many people would guess wrong if they were to predict my position. I have heard plenty of opposition to the proposition so I know the major reasons for those who oppose it. The most famous reasons for those who support Proposition 8 seem to be the "Six Consequences." I have not read those six consequences, but again, the opposition has been vocal enough that I have a pretty good idea of what those are. Today when I read the statement by Constitutional Law professors from California I decided that it was time to set the record straight about this whole issue. Like so many issues, the rancor and the passion on both sides has served to obscure the real issue and color the arguments into inaccuracy. For my purposes I will stick to the 3 points emphasized in this statement .

The first point is correct only to the first sentence – Proposition 8 would change existing California law. The trick is that there is nothing inherently bad about changing our existing written laws, especially when those laws are unreasonable in any way (self-contradictory, vague, or outside the jurisdiction of law are examples of why a law may be considered unreasonable). Those arguing in favor of Proposition 8 are arguing that the definition of marriage falls outside the jurisdiction of human law. To them it is not a matter of discrimination, it is a belief that the following statement is fundamentally false on simple semantic grounds:

Proposition 8 would forbid government officials from according gay men and lesbians a fundamental right they now enjoy and that all other adults in California will continue to enjoy: the right to marry a person of their choice.

The real argument behind Proposition 8 is that no person has the fundamental right to marry the person of their choice but that, in fact, every person finds that their choice is limited by the very definition of what constitutes marriage. At the core, what proponents of proposition 8 are claiming is that marriage is not a man-made construct and cannot be made to conform to the changing whims of society. When society forbade interracial marriage half a century ago it did not mean that interracial couples could not meet the criterion of marriage, only that society was too myopic to tolerate such a marriage.

The real argument of Proposition 8 supporters rests on two premises: 1) that what constitutes marriage is defined by God and not by society, and 2) that God’s definition of marriage requires (among any other criterion) that the parties to marriage may not share a common gender. Anyone who accepts those two premises (as I do) must support this proposition or be in open rebellion against God. (Those who reject these two premises cannot be judged by their fellow men to be in such rebellion on this issue.)

There are two very unfortunate truths regarding the arguments being made by most proponents of Proposition 8. First, they give little if any emphasis to their real argument (as stated above) preferring instead to try to make their case in terms of human law (which argument is naturally riddled with bias and inaccuracy as I will show below). Second, they fail to articulate that – contrary to what opponents claim in order to accuse them of bigotry and discrimination – while they believe that marriage by its nature cannot be entered into in a homosexual fashion they do not argue that gays and lesbians do not have the same fundamental rights as all other people, namely the rights to devote their lives to the person of their choice, to share their earthly possessions with the person of their choice, to offer care and support for the person of their choice in times of emotional, financial, physical, or mental distress (or comfort). In other words, gays have every right to cohabitate, enjoy hospital visitation and inheritance rights, and everything else commonly associated with marriage, but we assert that it is a matter of fact, and not a matter of discrimination that such sharing does not meet the qualifications for the term "marriage."

What is being decided by the voters of California is whether they will make California law conform with the definition of marriage espoused by the proponents which states that a marriage cannot be made without the participation of both a man and a woman or if they will insist in California law that marriage is a human social construct that may be altered according to the prevailing views of society.

The second point is correct on the surface and clearly exposes a flaw in the argument by Prop. 8 proponents. The tax exempt status of churches who refuse to perform marriages for same sex couples will receive the same protection regardless of the outcome of Prop. 8. Historically the tax exempt status of churches has been regularly challenged and rarely overturned. Going forward, it will be regularly challenged and occasionally overturned. The statement by the law professors ignores the truth behind such challenges which is that taking a position against legalized same sex marriage is as good an excuse as any for a group to get angry at a church and challenge their tax exempt status.

The third point is like the second in that it is technically correct and exposes a flaw in the arguments of proponents. Proposition 8 is neither necessary nor sufficient to "prevent public schools from teaching issues relating to marriage by same-sex couples to children whose parents oppose that instruction." Here the statement by the law professors ignores the facts that regardless of what is written in the books of law, very few parents have the time or the expertise to exercise their "absolute right to review all materials provided as part of a school’s comprehensive sexual health education program and to have their children excused from participation," and that legal recognition of same sex marriage by the state gives tacit permission for those who would wish to push such an agenda to test the limits of what parents will permit.

Yes, I just offered correction on the statement of 54 constitutional law professors – including Lawrence Lessig (who I esteem very highly) – and yet the only point that anyone can disagree about is the one that this issue is meant to resolve. In other words, the voters of California will go to the polls to decide between me and those who disagree with me as far as California law is concerned. On the other points everyone should stop their posturing and pointing out of technicalities. The real issue is the question of semantics.

Tags California, gay marriage, government, marriage, morality, Prop 8, religion

Local

Robert Moultrie Question 5 Response

Post author By David
Post date October 30, 2008
No Comments on Robert Moultrie Question 5 Response

I got a belated response today from Robert Moultrie to the questions I sent. Rather than give him his own forum here – especially considering the length of his answers – I will only link to his new blog for anyone who is interested in learning more about him as a candidate. On the other hand, I wanted to respond to a couple of things he said in answer to my final question, “What is the most important political task for voters to undertake?”

To educate themselves! But this, in and of itself, will make no difference until voters begin to vote their consciences, and stop voting because they are afraid of the “other guy.” . . . But the truth is that we are largely getting the government we are voting for. People talk around the water cooler year after year . . . But after all the talk, after all the listening to the news, after all the thought and emotion that goes into forming what they believe, when the rubber meets the road they do not vote for what they think is right, but instead vote based on fear of the other guy.

I agree with this overall. Certainly there are some people who honestly believe that John McCain is right (to make some easy assumptions about how Utah is/will be voting) even though he was not even among their top two choices in February (he was 3rd among Republicans and probably received fewer votes than even Hillary Clinton in the primaries). But despite the true believers who vote for him, many who vote for him here will do so only to avoid “throwing away their vote” or supporting a Democrat. Where I disagree with Mr. Moultrie is when he goes on to say:

Our Founding Fathers gave the people one time, just one, to have a voice in their Government: and that is when they vote.

To make that assertion is to imply that not only should there be no lobbying (which many people would agree on) but no contacting your leaders to provide input on issues of importance to you. That attitude suggests that we should vote in November, and then watch our representatives only to collect data on whether they deserve to be reelected in the future. I don’t believe that, and I can’t believe that Mr. Moultrie does either. There are ways to have our voices heard in government between election cycles and we need to avail ourselves of those opportunities on issues of importance.

Tags civic participation, government, House 20

life National State

The Costs of Health Insurance

Post author By David
Post date October 29, 2008
7 Comments on The Costs of Health Insurance

Maybe this is related to being under a dentists drill this morning, but today’s topic is the cost of health care. A story over at The Health Insurance Myth detailing how much more a visit to the eye doctor costs for insurance companies was very revealing. Add to that the fact that we are entering the Open Enrollment period at Intermountain Healthcare where I get to reassess my health insurance situation and make any changes necessary and you can see why I would be thinking about this today.

I’ve never done this before since I’ve never had a year where I was not in a new job, had just enrolled immediately prior to the Open Enrollment period, or had the company completely changing their benefits package. This year we get a mild rate increase over last year and there are a couple of new benefits available, but nothing truly drastic. Open Enrollment doesn’t mean too much to me since I don’t foresee making any significant changes, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Intermountain subtly encouraging employees to choose their High Deductible plan. There was nothing really overt about it, but while rates are increasing for all the plans they still pay the entire premium for full time employees on the HD plan and on top of that they reduced the annual out of pocket maximum by almost half so those using these plans have lower financial risk than before.

To give some perspective – their no-deductible plan costs more in premiums than the deductible of the high deductible plan – that’s before you set aside any money in a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to cover for the copays (money that disappears if you don’t use it). The lower deductible plans cost less than the deductible on th HD plan until you factor in their deductibles and copays. For anyone who expects to pay the full deductible they can contribute their premium and FSA money to a Health Savings Account (HSA) and easily cover the out of pocket maximum. Any money they don’t spend in the HSA rolls over to the next year and earns interest. For those of us who don’t expect to even meet the full deductible we can build up an HSA that earns interest and is almost perpetually funded very quickly so that we can devote the extra cash to other needs.

All of this deals with the insurance/health care issue at a personal level, but it should illustrate the need to step outside the mindset of traditional health insurance as we try to tackle this public challenge – the last thing we need to do with this monster is limit our options at the outset. (Unfortunately Medicaid, CHIP, and UPP serve as good examples of programs where we artificially limit our options.)

Tags government, health care, HSA, insurance

Local State

District 20 Candidate Responses

Post author By David
Post date October 28, 2008
4 Comments on District 20 Candidate Responses

In response to the questions that I sent to the candidates for House District 20 I received a written response from Kyle Roberts, an invitation to call Becky Edwards, and no response from Robert Moultrie despite multiple requests. I will post the answers I received below with the caveat that the responses from Becky are the best notes I could take from our conversation and not necessarily the verbatim responses she gave.

1. In your opinion, what is the most important job of a state legislator?

Kyle: The most important job of a state legislator is to make sure that my constituents know how each law will effect them. Communication needs to be more important than what it has been in the past. I hope to accomplish this via my website and blog to which people can subscribe to receive updates.
Becky: To advocate for the people in their district.

2. What is the most important challenge or issue for the state of Utah?

Kyle: Tackling the budget. Surprisingly, it was only a couple of years ago that we had a surplus. And now we are facing a deficit. We need to trim off the excess and make sure our fundamental programs are properly funded: public education, some type of health care reform, and transportation are my top three.
Becky: The economy, job growth, and the cost of health care (all relate to each other).

3. What is the most important challenge or issue for House District 20?

Kyle: Public education is extremely important – especially when our district is growing so fast. We need to make sure that we have good schools, teachers, and administrators to be able to meet this new demand. But we also need to make sure that we have legislators who understand our community’s dynamics to fight for our right on the hill.
Becky: Not many challenges unique to our district apart from the state: public education, economic growth, and health care costs.

4. Based on the best information you have, what ideas do you have to tackle the important issue(s) you identified in questions 2 and 3?

Kyle: As I walked throughout the communities this month, I have been talking mainly about balance. I think that if we have more balance in the government, we would not have only two people creating the budget every year. But rather we would have the entire legislature define what money goes where. More discussion, more debate. The people who lose when that does not happen are the citizens of Utah. We need to have that. For public education, we need to just put that as a priority. Public education does not necessarily need more money. Public education needs to be run better. The legislature needs to keep out of micromanaging public education. We have qualified school board members across the state to do that job. We need to give more power to the school boards to make decisions that are best for them.
Becky:
- Education: depoliticize public education, build excellence by offering choice and accountability (e.g charter schools), and cut waste.
- Health care: cut waste – health care it is not a right but it is a part of social and economic infrastructure (like roads) – it is most appropriately addressed at the federal level.
- Economic growth: mostly a county issue but state tax structure can assist in encouraging growth.

5. What is the most important political task for voters to undertake?

Kyle: To be informed. Take the time to understand all of the issues. Vote on each candidate who represents your values, principles, and ideals. Be responsible in your vote.
Becky: Stay involved. Becky indicated that she would like to hold town meetings within the district (at various locations) to discuss and brainstorm regarding the issues that the district and the legislature are dealing with. She does not claim to have all the answers but she is willing to work hard and tap the resources of the district to be an informed representative. She would also like to reach out to voters similar to the way that Rep. Neuenschwander did with his email list.

I would like to thank both Becky and Kyle for their candor and for taking the time to respond.

Tags 2008, Anything but Neutral, candidates, House 20, Utah

National State

Smallitics

Let me just start out by saying that I have no problem with Randy Horiuchi running for re-election, nor with his campaign slogan that "He’s got game." That being said, the image of him in hockey gear with the caption "He’s got game (for hockey moms)" has left me with an itch that I just have to scratch.

This struck me as politics at its most senseless (like most of the presidential campaign so far). I see only three possible reasons why he would need to specify hockey moms in his ad:

He’s secretly running for the vice presidency.
The nation’s most famous Hockey Mom is secretly running for Salt Lake County Council.
Hockey moms are an influential constituency in Salt Lake County politics.

Could someone please help me know which of these is the case (or if there is another reason that I have missed)?

Tags media, Sarah Palin, Utah

National

Expand Congress

I was very excited to be introduced to Thirty-Thousand.org. The first introduction on the site states an obvious fact:

435 can not faithfully represent 300,000,000 Americans.

Our constitution designed the House of Representatives to represent the people of the United States (while the senate was meant to represent the states as soverign powers within the union). The number of representatives was intended to expand or contract with the population. In 1913 the Congress capped the number of Representatives at 435 which would be apportioned according to the relative population of the states. This is what causes situations where Utah and North Carolina are essentially competing with each other for a representative (which is what happened in 2000). The result is that representatives can never be truly equal among states. For example, California has 18 times as many representatives in Congress as Utah, but they only have 15 times the population of Utah.

When the Constitution was being constructed the founders settled on 30,000 as the minimum number of people that each district should have (hence the name of the site). Considering the advances in communication I believe that a representative could possibly be expected to represent more than 30,000 people so I would be open to choosing a new number for our modern congressional districts, but I am confident that the number should only be a small fraction of the 700,000 that the average congressional district contains now. The result of returning to the original practice would be that each state would receive the number of representatives that their population warranted without issues of deciding which state was more deserving of "that last seat"

The more I have thought about this the more I realize that it could also address two other issues that I care about. Those who would like to see the electoral college abolished should try expanding the electoral college by expanding the house of representatives. This would increase the chances of the electoral college reflecting the outcome of the popular vote – especially if the states were to discontinue block voting in the electoral college. Also, if the representatives were apportioned not simply according to populate but according to voting population it would provide incentive for people to take their voting seriously since voting in low numbers could lower the number of representatives that would be sent from low voting areas for ten years (I’m assuming that apportionment of representatives would still be based on the decennial census).

We should return to a system where the number of representatives is based on the population of the state and not on the relative population of the state compared to the population of other states. This would bring us closer in line with the constitution in a very important way and has the potential of other very positive side effects.

Tags change congress, electoral college, ideal

State

Climbing the Mountain

A week ago Scott posted a 1500 word analysis of the mountain I have invited others to climb with me. As usual, he provided many useful insights that should help us to navigate this climb successfully. After having a week to begin to digest his analysis I am finally ready to begin to address some of the issues he raised. Before I do so I would like to make it clear that I never believed that this would be a simple undertaking and I hope that nobody else thinks so either.

Scott begins his analysis by addressing the question of what causes voter apathy. I saw 3 factors in his analysis that contribute to higher voter apathy in Utah: age – the propensity for people under 25 to generally not be active in politics combined with Utah having a higher percentage of younger voters among our population; a consistent supermajority – incentive goes down whether there is no hope of winning or virtually no chance of losing; and lack of adequate information. There is little we can do about age except to reach out to young people and encourage them to be informed and involved. (It was the questions of my teenage neice that finally pushed me into taking some action.) The consistent supermajority in this state makes it so that I am more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. I will only vote for candidates I can support based on their positions and qualifications, but if both parties offer such a candidate I will go with the Democrat every time. The lack of adequate information is what this group is most directly hoping to address which is why it cannot afford to be limited to a website and a blog-cloud. We need to do things that will catch the attention of all citizens whether they use the internet actively or not. The information that we provide must be information from candidates for voter consumption as well as information from voters for use by candidates and elected officials.

Scott also identifies the obstacles we face such as lack of time in our busy world and the challenges of organizing diverse people. Scott points out the potential for duplicating the efforts of other groups such as Project Vote Smart (PVS) and The League of Women Voters. These are very real issues to consider. My goal has been to minimize the demands that we make of those who participate and find ways to get maximum benefit from those things we do ask of them. A good example of such an approach is Downsize D.C. which has made it very easy for people to participate in politics by providing information on the subjects they are trying to address and allowing people to write to their senators and representatives with one link. (Click the link, add your personal comments and click "Send" to deliver messages to all your legislative leaders at once.) By working in tandem with existing groups such as those listed above we can have a greater impact in our initial efforts. One difference I see between what I hope to accomplish and what PVS is trying to do is that I want to focus on our one small state. I believe that the nationwide efforts of PVS help to perpetuate the top first mentality that is a root of many of our problems. I would encourage anyone who is so inclined to support and assist the efforts of PVS but their focus should not be confused with what I hope to develop.

Anything But Neutral should focus on gathering information from candidates here in Utah and sharing that information as widely as possible As much as possible, let the candidates speak for themselves and encourage them to speak about issues rather than getting too focused on parties, associations, and opponent bashing that pervade national politics. This is why I called for people to ask questions of the candidates locally and post their answers before election day. I know we’re pretty late this cycle, but hopefully we can do something now just to get some momentum before we enter the post-election burnout period. After election day I will quickly share my ideas of how we can make a difference in our political process between elections – hopefully without burdening our already busy lives too heavily.

I wholeheartedly agree with Scott’s conclusion:

I encourage others to get involved and help in this effort. But let’s not delude ourselves. We are fighting against significant disincentives to political involvement. Simply providing information and discussion isn’t going to overcome that.

Tags Anything but Neutral, candidates, connections, elections, Utah, voting

Local State

Ask the Candidates (and Share Their Answers)

Post author By David
Post date October 23, 2008
No Comments on Ask the Candidates (and Share Their Answers)

In an effort to not lose all inertia, I am publicly inviting anyone who has any interest in Anything But Neutral to choose a political race in Utah and ask the candidates of that race a few questions of their own choosing. When you get responses (or by Friday, October 31st even if not all the candidates have responded) post the responses you receive somewhere that people can read the responses – preferable somewhere that people are free to share their own thoughts after reading the answers. I have asked the following questions from the candidates in House District 20:

In your opinion, what is the most important job of a state legislator?
What is the most important challenge or issue for the state of Utah?
What is the most important challenge or issue for House District 20?
Based on the best information you have, what ideas do you have to tackle the important issue(s) you identified in questions 2 and 3?
What is the most important political task for voters to undertake?

Most of the people who have expressed interest have their own blogs where they could post such answers. Some examples of others who have done this include Utah Rattler (House 20) and Thad Van Ry (Senate 23). If you prefer not to post the answers on your own site I would be willing to post answers for other races.

Tags 2008, Anything but Neutral, civic participation, elections, House 20, voting

life

Short Term Uncertainty

I will be spending most of next week at a conference at Disney World so I don’t know how much I’ll be posting (little if any, I suspect). Besides that, I will be trying to take some concrete action to shape the group I talked about to encourage more widespread participation in civil political dialog. I’m thinking it will be called "Anything but Neutral."

Before I go silent for a few days I thought I should share the most accurate economic news I’ve read in weeks.

Tags Anything but Neutral, economics, meta